It is a very great honour to open this Second Ministerial Meeting of the World
Trade Organization. This honour is a special one for me because I have only recently
assumed responsibility for Economic Affairs and International Trade in our Government -
recent enough to be awed by this system's remarkable successes, and even more, to be
inspired by its enormous potential to help navigate the global transformations we are
living through.

It is a very great honour to open this Second
Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization. This honour is a special one
for me because I have only recently assumed responsibility for Economic Affairs and
International Trade in our Government - recent enough to be awed by this system's
remarkable successes, and even more, to be inspired by its enormous potential to help
navigate the global transformations we are living through. Like each of you in this
room, I am acutely aware that when we discuss the future of the multilateral trading
system we are discussing the future of one the most important international economic
institutions of our time.

This Ministerial Meeting comes at a significant
moment for the Multilateral Trading System. It coincides with the commemoration of
the system's 50th Anniversary which in itself lends to an historic weight and consequence
to our deliberations. The world will be watching and listening to what we do and say
over the next several days. They will be looking for consensus and
cooperation. But more than this, they will be gauging the strength of our commitment
to this system, and our capacity for shared leadership at a time when globalization, in
which trade is such an important element, is the subject of intense public debate all over
the world.

This Meeting is also important because it comes at a
point of transition - after the First Ministerial Meeting in Singapore, but before the
negotiations scheduled at the turn-of-the-century and the decisions that will need to be
addressed at our next Ministerial. This is, in itself, extremely liberating.
It allows us to stretch our collective imagination towards the future direction and
purpose of the trading system -free for once of the constraints of locked-in
negotiating positions and timetables. It encourages us to remove the blinkers of
narrow sectoral or national interests and to focus on the greater good of the whole of the
trading community.

And this Meeting comes at a time when the challenges
- as well as the opportunities - of a globally interdependent economy have never been more
apparent. Recent financial instability in South-East Asia has sent shock waves
around the world. What makes this crisis so significant is that our trade and
integration is far more pervasive today than ever before. It is also significant
because it underscores the vital importance of an open Multilateral Trading System to
keeping markets open, restoring investor confidence, and preventing contagion from
spreading. But it is significant in another respect - it suggests that unless we
continue to strengthen the institutional underpinnings of our global economy we seem
destined to revisit such crises in the future, with perhaps even more serious
repercussions.

This is a time for vision and for imagination.
The pace of change in the global economy is not only raising public expectations about our
system - it is demanding answers. Over the past twelve months alone, we have reached
agreements in telecommunications, information technologies, and financial services - the
significance of which Director-General Renato Ruggiero has rightly compared to a major
negotiating Round. We have also set out, through the High Level Meeting of
Least-Developed Countries, on a path which will give an important impetus to the
integration of the world's poorest economies into the global trading system. In the
face of economic turbulence and uncertainty, our Members have shown the vision and courage
to pursue policies of liberalization which are essential to global stability, growth and
development.

And yet, despite these advances, the frontiers of our global economy keep racing
ahead. New technologies such as electronic commerce are fast rendering obsolete old
policy tools, and are challenging us to find new ways to coordinate our shared interests
across a borderless economic space.

We have two basic themes for this Ministerial
Meeting: implementation and future activities. These subjects are not
unrelated. How successfully we implement our existing commitments and obligations -
according to the spirit as well as the letter of our Uruguay Round undertakings - will be
the clearest possible signal of the system's capacity for wider and deeper
undertakings. How well-equipped our countries are to participate in the trading
system will be the real test of whether we have created a truly global economy - or one
where many millions still wait on its margins. We have all of us every interest in
approaching these issues in a focused, constructive and businesslike manner.

But we also have a responsibility - as well as an
opportunity - to lift our sights beyond this Meeting and beyond this century, to set a new
course for the trading system in the years ahead. We are not here to promote
liberalization for liberalization's sake. Rather we share a commitment to freer
multilateral trade, not as an end in itself, but as an essential means to far more
important ends. Behind each line of the 20,000 pages of the WTO Agreements are
millions of workers and farmers, entrepreneurs and professionals who want greater health
and security for their families, freedom from the shadow of unemployment, and a better
future for their children. Behind each accession negotiation are millions of
citizens who want to share in what all of us now enjoy - a system dedicated to openness,
mutual exchange, and freedom of choice.

With this goal in mind, I declare this Second
Ministerial Meeting of the WTO to be opened.